


Muffins

by shineyma



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: BFFs, Gen, Girl Power, bizarre stories that wander way way off prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no one like Caroline for ignoring keep-away signals. [Or, how a drabble about lifelong friendship wandered off topic and ended up being about muffins.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Muffins

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I wrote this as a response to some ficathon for a prompt--something about Elena and Caroline being old friends I think--and then never posted it because it totally got away from me and is actually more than a little bizarre. Seriously. But there are a few lines that I really like and so I'm posting it. Feel free to ridicule how weird this is. It won't hurt my fragile feelings.

The only reason Elena even gets out of bed that morning is that she doesn’t want to have to explain anything to anyone. The sudden influx of danger into her life, in addition to all of the other things that suck about it, has made all of the people she knows very sensitive about each other’s absences. If she doesn’t show up for school there will be at least three people banging on her bedroom door before first period is over.

So she drags herself out of bed, showers, gets dressed, and gets herself to school. She views it as a step-by-step process, and it helps a little: focus on the next step and nothing else. Once she’s at school, though, she has forty minutes before classes start and no real distractions. She sits down at a picnic table with an open textbook, hoping to a) get some studying in (vampires are terrible for her grades), and b) dissuade anyone from trying to make conversation.

Here’s the thing. When she was a kid, there was an annual town event called ‘Muffins with Moms’ where all the mothers with young children would take their kids to the town square and have a sort of breakfast party. One year, when Elena was seven, she’d been sick on Muffins with Moms morning. She’d been so disappointed that her mom promised they’d have their own muffin day just as soon as she was better. And they did. As soon as she was feeling up to it, the two of them spent an entire day (May 14, as it happened) baking muffins together. After that, it became tradition that on May 14, they’d eat muffins together, just the two of them. Even if it was just a quick five minute speed breakfast before school, they did it every year without fail.

It was a silly tradition, hardly as significant as Mother’s Day or a birthday, but it still meant a lot. Last year, it had fallen on a Thursday, so they’d eaten their muffins hastily over the sink while exchanging meaningless chit-chat. A little more than a week later, her parents were dead.

It’s May 14 and she has no one to share muffins with. Considering everything else going on in her life, it’s completely ridiculous to be so hung up on this. But she can’t help it. It’s just the cherry on top of the sundae of awful that her life has become, and there’s no hope of relief. There’s no light at the end of this tunnel: her parents are gone and they aren’t coming back.

It’s amazing how something like that can keep sneaking up on you and punching you in the stomach.

Her textbook plan works for all of ten minutes before there’s suddenly someone sitting across from her. She looks up from her book and is not the least bit surprised to find that Caroline has joined her. There’s no one like Caroline for ignoring keep-away signals.

Caroline rests her chin in one hand and examines Elena for a long moment.

“What?” Elena asks uncomfortably.

“I thought so,” Caroline says, totally ignoring Elena’s question. She pulls a brown paper bag out of her purse and hands it to Elena. “Here.”

Elena reaches into the bag and pulls out a muffin. It’s chocolate chip, from the bakery near the Grill, and the sight of it makes her eyes fill with tears, which is just ridiculous. It’s a _muffin_ , for God’s sake. She should not be getting teary over a muffin. But she is, and she can barely stop herself from actually crying.

Suddenly Caroline’s arms are around her in a slightly awkward sideways hug. She was so focused on the muffin that she missed Caroline coming around the table to sit next to her.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline says in her ear. Her voice is soft and sad and fairly uncertain. Caroline’s not very good with words. She’s too honest, too open—she has a tendency to say whatever comes into her head, and that usually ends badly.

But when it comes to actions (Elena realizes/remembers as she looks down at the muffin in her hands), Caroline’s one of the best. Elena sets the muffin down gently and twists on the bench so that she can hug Caroline properly. She presses her face into Caroline’s hair, smelling shampoo and lotion and the subtle undertone that is purely _Caroline_ , and finds that the urge to cry has lessened slightly.

“How did you know?” she asks, pulling away.

Caroline shrugs, looking a little uncertain.

“May 14,” she says. “Muffins with Mom. This is the first year since…I just—I thought you might like a muffin.”

Elena looks at the muffin again, then back at Caroline. Only Caroline would remember the significance of May 14, and only Caroline would think that Elena would be missing a muffin. Only Caroline would _care_ enough to notice and to realize what it would mean.

“It’s perfect,” she says. “Thank you.”

Caroline smiles, relieved.

Elena hugs her again, reveling in the warmth the action fills her with. Everything that’s happened this past year—her parents dying, the sudden influx of vampires and the subsequent decline in Mystic Falls’ population, the fracturing of her friendship with Bonnie—has left her feeling cold and somewhat empty. Caroline, though, Caroline still smells the same, still hugs the same, still comforts with actions and struggles with words, and that is so comforting that Elena couldn’t explain it if she tried.

There’s been a distance between them lately, full of secrets and hurt and words that shouldn’t have been said, and Elena knows they’ll have to deal with it eventually. But right now it feels like there’s no distance at all, because her best friend brought her a muffin and is hugging her. There are no jokes about lesbianism, no accusations of exclusion, no blunt, hurtful words. Just a muffin and a hug and a bond of friendship fifteen years strong.

And that really is perfect.


End file.
